Clickbait, mendacity, and seething hatred for a LadyPrimeMinister
Diary of the last 48 hours
6.45am
My head is full of a cold or RSV or some damn thing and my faculty for locating hope, optimism or positivity is entirely failing to ignite.
An Afghan woman in Kabul writes: ‘Now I have to burn everything I achieved’
Meanwhile, the men standing around were making fun of girls and women, laughing at our terror. “Go and put on your chadari [burqa],” one called out. “It is your last days of being out on the streets,” said another. “I will marry four of you in one day,” said a third.
All I could see around me were the fearful and scared faces of women and ugly faces of men who hate women, who do not like women to get educated, work and have freedom. Most devastating to me were the ones who looked happy and made fun of women. Instead of standing by our side, they stand with the Taliban and give them even more power.
What can be done for women fleeing the Taliban? Everything, you hope. God knows what that might actually amount to.
6.48am
Michael Moore writes:
15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia
and also
They found Osama bin Laden in a house just down the road from Pakistan’s West Point.
I don’t propose to be one more armchair expert on Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires, but if he is saying: Your justification for being there in the first place was misbegotten; now here we are. What a waste and mistake it all feels like, then I’m with Michael Moore.
7.46am
My head is full of a cold or RSV or some damn thing as I type a submission to Auckland Transport:
Hell yeah. Start tomorrow please.
Thank you for coming to my submission. If bikes are not your thing, best to skip right past this, but if you’d like to see a really lovely visualisation of a nicer city, do please click the pretty video.
8.01am
On the phone to arrange my third Covid test. I have zero belief I might actually have it but I believe in correct procedure and also look forward to asking the doctor if these symptoms are the damned RSV. From upstairs comes the sound of poor Karren being seized by another coughing fit.
August. If it’s not a cold snap and power cut it’s some damn thing sending you to your sick bed.
8.25am
Meanwhile the virus itself just breezes on through every open door. Read this and count the grim cost of vaccination having become a partisan issue.
8.28am
Cheery Optimism content of newsletter drops below minimum acceptable levels! Stand by please, I have something from the weekend that might help.
Here is Andy Slavitt, former Biden White House Senior Advisor for COVID Response setting out what the COVID end game might be.
The whole thread is great, but let's jump to the bit where he lays out what we need to do now:
1. Accelerate the global vaccination effort. Instead of 70% by Dec 2022, we need 70% by March 22. The difference in giving the virus less time as we attack it is critical. A slow attack means more time for it to find ways to adapt.
2. The development of an oral anti-viral is an essential tool. Along with better ventilated buildings, we can keep transmission low and make infections shorter and milder.
3. Research and development of treatments for long COVID must begin now.
And he answers the question: What does our new normal look like?
He says we should be willing to tolerate:
Masks when we travel and in heavy seasons
Staying home when we’re sick— always
Periodic outbreaks
Caution around key populations
Showing we are vaccinated/tested
And he says there is something we can decide not to tolerate:
Preventable deaths. He says we should not accept that people die from the flu in a bad season, mostly elderly and kids. And we should not accept that even more from COVID.
9.32am
There’s commotion in social media thanks to one of local Twitter’s most dismal people - the one with the fetish for sidling into bookshops, pawing books about our LadyPrimeMinister, and sliding them back into the shelf with cover turned away so she no longer gazes down upon his shame.
He claims to have come upon some incredible leaked polling data that shows the LadyPrimeMinister and her commies in deep shit, polling-wise.
Into the news cycle it goes! Fast as you can say clickbait!
Except oh dear, what’s this? Oh no, it’s complete bullshit.
This is where we are now: never mind if it’s all lies. Just shove it out there and get a narrative going founded entirely upon mendacity and seething hatred for a LadyPrimeMinister.
Being of unsound mind this morning, I’m fully up for it.
The problem with making your own small contribution of bullshittery is that you can never be sure that as ludicrous and far-fetched as it might sound, some Terf-Smurf might not be at that very moment typing out the same words in earnest.
2.15pm
To the doctor for my third Covid swab, and she says yes probably RSV, now up we go, and thank you for your service. Or words to that effect. Can't remember now but she’s formulated a nice expression to convey the message thanks for doing what's in the best interest of the country. I’m almost tempted to go back for another just to hear it again.
3.15pm
For more positivity we cross to MTAF reader Martha Craig - hi Martha! - who asked last Friday morning:
Best classic tea rooms in the Wellington area? Just had a panic realising they’re vanishing. I want trays of club sandwiches, lamingtons, little savouries in a pie warmer, stainless steel teapot… anywhere left?
Great question. I’m old enough to remember a Matterhorn on Cuba Street that was pikelets and scones and not craft beer. I’m old enough to remember Suzy’s on Willis Street, warm, carpet-quiet, and a fearsome production line of top quality tray-fillers. And all the places like them.
Feel free to correct any of that if I’ve misremembered; there were also a lot of pubs.
Did Martha have success? Martha is a canny and discerning hunter of all things stylish and nostalgic in Aotearoa, so yes, she did.
This thread produced many serving suggestions, and her report from Zampelles Queensgate is everything you could ask for, up to and including an old-school milkshake.
All of this reminds me that I have Suzy's: A Coffee House History by Susette Goldsmith sitting on my shelf and haven't read it yet. Stand by for a report, possibly with more pictures of food.
4.20pm
Wrote this on the weekend, writing it again now: loved Nanci Griffith, just loved her. Our girl’s name comes from her music.
Beyond sad she’s gone.
James Smith’s cafeteria did asparagus rolls in white bread, ham and picalilli sandwiches and extremely gelatinous custard squares. All served by older women in house coats who hated you. This is also my experience of the Matterhorn in the 70s.
Oh The Matterhorn; the alluring laid-back glamour of the actual person Suzy; a high ceiling tearoom on a street off Lambton Quay, environs Kirkcaldies/DIC......echoes of clanging, banging EPNS teapots, glass topped wooden tables, chair legs squealing on the polished linoleum......behatted ladies pretending as cabinet ministers' wives. Could that explain the ostentatiously double parked CR plates sometimes seen outside? Not to forget the roast place Garlands upstairs above Vance Vivian cnr. Manners/Cuba, nor The Paramount, Courtenay Place, with its booth seating and 20 metres of steaming bains-marie full of hearty South European fare. For flash/showing off.....Pierres, Tinakori Road. Dear Wellington!